Measuring degree of serving organic food for restaurant supply chains in India

Purpose The organic reconfiguration in supply chain practices significantly varies with restaurant types, customers and the extent of the degree of serving organic food. The purpose of this study is to develop a quantitative application to measure the degree of serving Organic Food for Restaurant Supply Chains. Design/methodology/approach The detailed semi-structured interviews, onsite visits and secondary customer reviews of 60 restaurants of different sizes, locations and cuisines from India are used to explore typologies of organic supply chains. In the second stage, an approach for evaluating the degree of organic food serving is developed on the basis of Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) attributes, and differences between typologies are statistically tested using non-parametric Mann–Whitney U-test. Findings The results show that the degree of serving organic food differs with the type of restaurants across SCOR attributes. Based on the variations in SC practices, the work presents two types of restaurant supply chains – Organic Food Enthusiast (Type-I) and b) Village Voyagers (Type-II). The difference between the degree of serving organic food for the “Make” and “Enable” attributes is statistically insignificant. Despite variations in the strategic positioning, customer type and geographical context, both the organic supply chains tend to preserve their core making process. Practical implications The degree of serving organic food for each individual element of the SCOR model can be used by practitioners and managers to identify specific problems and opportunity areas where practical actions could be defined and taken to improve the organic food-based supply chain reconfiguration. Originality/value This paper proposes the quantitative approach to evaluating organic food serving capabilities of restaurant supply chains. Further, it empirically demonstrates the typologies of organic food serving supply chains.